View full sizePost-Standard archivesA Loblaws newspaper ad for the new South Avenue stor from 1958, courtesy of the research skills of Judi Durling.The heyday of Loblaws

Community leaders on the South Side hope to reopen a grocery store in a South Avenue building that held a Loblaws, years ago. It was also home to a "premium center" for using Loblaws stamps to claim housewares or sporting goods. Shoppers also visited such nearby businesses as Jerome Squadrito, a barber; Bob McKeon's liquor store; Freddie's grill; the Altra Cleaners; the Blue Ribbon Dairy; and the Home Family Laundry. As for Loblaws, you could find many of them across the region, from Fairmount Fair to a little plaza at Valley Drive and Seneca Turnpike.

Do you remember the "discount center" operation, or other Loblaws stores in Syracuse? What would it take today for a grocery on a South Avenue to replicate the success of such institutions as Nojaim's or Green Hills? Share those reflections by e-mailing columnist Sean Kirst at skirst@syracuse.com or by leaving your thoughts below.

Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

A South Side grocery store: What once worked might work again?

Sean Kirst, Post-Standard columnist

Back in the 1960s, when Bob Weismore attended Corcoran High School, a Loblaws supermarket did strong business near the corner of South and Bellevue avenues. Every Thursday, Weismore recalls, his stepmother walked from their flat to that store to do the shopping. Sometimes, because she met so many neighbors, it would be hours before she came home.

Weismore, 58, is now coach of the state champion Westhill High School baseball team. But he grows wistful when he drives past the long-closed supermarket, left behind by Loblaws almost 40 years ago. "It always make me think of how far (neighborhood) people must have to go if they want to go to a grocery store," he said.

Walt Dixie and some allies say that might finally change. Dixie, executive director of Jubilee Homes, convened a meeting Thursday at the Southwest Community Center, where he spoke of big dreams for the old Loblaws building. His agency bought it for $350,000. The plan is to create a corporation that would return the structure to its original use as a grocery, thus keeping jobs and money in the area.

The challenge will be generating the kind of traffic that once made Loblaws a success. The store was built in 1958, with Russell Polly as manager of the Loblaws "premium center." Russell died in 1998, but his son Michael recalls how shoppers who went to Loblaws for their groceries could also collect enough stamps to claim toys, housewares or sporting goods, at least before the premium center closed in 1964.

View full sizePhoto courtesy of Jeff GilbertFormer Loblaws employee Jeff Gilbert still displays an original Loblaws truck in the living room of his home.The grocery survived until 1970, when it became one of the first of 20 local Loblaws to disappear. Bob Guilfoyle, 68, who worked there in the 1960s, said the store was "state of the art," a contention supported by Patricia Masters of Syracuse.

"The meats were good, the store was very nice and I could do a week's shopping for $20," said Masters, 73, who lived nearby as a newlywed. But retail trends were turning upside down. The familiar neighborhood groceries in the city - Loblaws, A & P, Victory, Chicago Markets - began pulling out. The new giants of the trade preferred suburban sites.

"All of a sudden, you (went) there and it's gone," Masters said of the South Avenue Loblaws.

What didn't change was the local potential, according to many at Thursday's meeting. Khalid Bey, a community activist who showed up in support of a South Side grocery, said decades upon decades without a nearby supermarket conditioned neighborhood residents to shop outside the city. In the late 1950s, with a new store right on the corner, customers preferred to keep their money close to home.

"People in those days didn't want to drive 10 miles to go shopping," said Guilfoyle, who worked at the South Avenue store in its prime. "Each Loblaws was like a little center of the neighborhood."

He would be thrilled, he said, to see it be that way again.

About Sean Kirst

Former Post-Standard columnist Sean Kirst wrote about civic issues affecting Syracuse and Central New York. ... More about Sean»